Cardinal George Pell: Vatican treasurer faces historical sexual offences trialAustralia’s most senior Catholic has said he will plead not guilty to all charges

Melissa DaveyTue 1 May 2018

Cardinal George Pell, Australia’s most senior Catholic and the controller of the Vatican’s finances in Rome, has pleaded not guilty after he was ordered to stand trial over historical sexual offence allegations.

Pell has always denied the allegations against him, but it was the first time he had been required to enter a formal plea.

Many of the most serious allegations were dismissed in the Melbourne magistrates’ court on Tuesday, with witnesses described as unreliable and lacking credibility. But a number of charges were ordered to go to trial. Further details of the nature of the charges are unable to be reported for legal reasons....

The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse made a damning assessment of institutional attitudes in the town, going back decades.

By Damon Wilkinson 15 APR 2018

....But over the last forty years, the close-knit communities that make up Rochdale have been rocked by a string of child sexual abuse scandals.

‘Three Girls’. Satanic Abuse. Cyril Smith and Knowl View.

At times it seems abusers have had free rein in the town. Why? Has there been a series of conspiracies and cover-ups as some believe?

Or merely a perfect storm of disregard - the toxic mix of paedophile networks, self-serving politicians, small-town poverty and government neglect?

On Thursday a long-awaited report lifted the lid on the widespread sexual abuse carried out by former Rochdale MP Cyril Smith and several other predatory paedophiles.

....Monsters loomed in places where children were supposed to be protected - at Cambridge House, a boys’ hostel, and Knowl View, a residential school for boys with learning and behavioural difficulties, from the 1960s to the 1990s.

Public places became playgrounds for perverts too; the bus station, the Smith Street public toilet - in view of council’s offices - where lads of primary school age were prostituted for just a few pence.

It’s a chilling precedent of the the town’s most recent abuse scandal - in which young girls were molested by much older men under the nose of the authorities.

The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse did not look at that most recent child grooming scandal. But it made a damning assessment of institutional attitudes in the town, going back decades.

Based on the harrowing testimony of dozens of victims of abuse at Knowl View, Cambridge House and Smith Street toilets, plus evidence from social workers, teachers, politicians and council officers, the IICSA’s findings lay bare how young, often vulnerable victims were let down time and time again by the very people who were supposed to be protecting them.

But how was this allowed to happen?

Certainly Cyril Smith has cast a shadow over the town. 29 stone at his heaviest, he was long celebrated as a political giant.

How distressing must that reputation have been to his victims, who knew what he was really capable of?

Stories have abounded in Rochdale that Smith had local police ‘in his pocket’ - using political influence to quash investigations that he was a serial molester of boys.

In 1970 a Lancashire constabulary probe into Smith was dropped on the advice of the Director of Public Prosecutions, who felt the allegations concerned - which dated from Cambridge House in the mid 60s - were ‘stale’, lacked corroboration, and the ‘character of the complainants would likely render their evidence suspect’.

....But what is abundantly clear from the report is that allegations of sexual assault were simply not taken seriously by those in authority, a culture that permeated the council from top to bottom for years, and allowed Smith and others to repeatedly get away with their sickening crimes.

From social workers and education workers to former council leaders Richard Farnell - suspended by the Labour Party after the report concluded he lied about what he knew about Knowl View - and Paul Rowen, who has been accused of having ‘turned a blind eye’ to the problems at Knowl View, there was a ‘careless and wholly inadequate response’ to the issue.

In regards to Knowl View the inquiry found there was a ‘total lack of urgency on the part of the authorities to address the problem and treat the matters involved for what they were – serious sexual assaults’....

'Satanic Christian' couple in child porn case caught by FBI Cincinnati task forceKevin Grasha April 20, 2018A special agent and police officer working for an FBI Cincinnati task force helped uncover “systematic” sexual abuse of children by a woman and man who claimed they were a “Satanic Christian” couple, court documents show.

The couple sexually abused six children who were in their care and produced multiple images of child pornography, officials said. Federal prosecutors in a news release called the couple’s behavior “depraved” and said it “represented ongoing, systematic and horrific abuse of multiple children.”

The victims ranged in age from 6 months to 14 years.

Sherri Smith, of Osceola, Indiana, and her boyfriend, Joseph Williams, of Watervliet, Michigan, were sentenced this week in federal court in Michigan. Smith was sentenced to 60 years in prison; Williams was sentenced to 80 years.

According to court documents, Williams contacted members of the FBI Cincinnati task force through the website, Motherless.com. Communications then continued through messaging apps.

In a February 2017 message, according to court documents, the person “stated that ‘they’ were a ‘Satanic Christian’ couple and were into ‘older/younger (very younger) and incest.’”

Williams’ home was described as a “child pornography house of horrors.” Among items seized was a reproduction of a young girl's buttocks and genitals, court documents say.